


the closer i am to finding God (you're a miracle to me)

by Lord Vitya (ProtoDan)



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Justice League (2017)
Genre: Blow Jobs, Body Worship, Bruce Wayne and His Constant Morbid Streak (TM), Bruce Wayne and His Weird Deifying Bullshit (TM), Clark Kent and His Unending Near-Saintlike Patience With All This Nonsense (TM), M/M, Morning Sex, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Porn with Feelings, honor bondage, tiny tiny tiny JL 2017 spoilers but really only if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-11
Updated: 2017-12-11
Packaged: 2019-02-13 07:37:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12979230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoDan/pseuds/Lord%20Vitya
Summary: From the DCEU Kink Meme:Bruce/Clark, body worship. Because they're both so gloriously, perfectly built. I can especially see Clark worshipping every inch of Bruce's body, every perfectly trained muscle, every scar, touching and kissing him all over and memorising everything. But Bruce worshipping Clark's literally flawless body would be just as great.AKA:This prompt was made for meeeee





	the closer i am to finding God (you're a miracle to me)

It's hardly unusual for Clark to wake up alone in Bruce's bed. While it took some measure of adjustment—the first time was with a flash of panic, Clark thinking and overthinking his absence until he registered the steady rhythm of Bruce's heart from below in the Cave—Clark has gotten used to the absences. He wakes up in the ocean of Bruce's sheets, the space beside him empty, and he listens until he can hear Bruce's heartbeat somewhere in the house, or looks around until he sees notes like _Early morning meeting -B._ The constant is that Bruce is always out of sight, yet he makes himself easy to find, so long as one knows where to look.

It's sweet, in that singular way that Bruce is but will never admit to.

What's unusual, then, is that when Clark stirs this morning, when he blinks the sleep from his eyes, he sees a shadow at the window as familiar as his own. Bruce stands in perfect silhouette, stunningly naked, hair disheveled, haloed by the sunrise, and it might just be the single most beautiful thing Clark has seen in his life.

Clark shifts, and Bruce turns at the whisper of blankets. "Morning," says Bruce, a fraction of a lopsided smile crinkling his eyes—and okay, maybe _that's_ the most beautiful thing. It's hard to quantify.

"G'morning," Clark murmurs. He sits up, propping himself up on his elbows as Bruce approaches the bed. "Nowhere to be today?"

Bruce shrugs, planting a knee on the mattress between Clark's thighs. "Not until three," he says, hands on either side of Clark's hips. "Thought I'd stay in a little longer today."

Clark smiles as he reaches up, tangling his fingers in Bruce's hair to pull him down close enough to kiss. This is the first time Clark has been able to see Bruce's body bare in full light when neither of them was in any mortal danger, and it's—he's _stunning._ From the spread of thin, dark hair across his broad chest, the network of scars that cross his whole body, the way the light dances over his shoulders. God. He knows why Bruce doesn't show himself off in broad daylight much, but he still can't help but feel a little cheated by it.

"It's good to see you," Clark murmurs, carding his fingers through Bruce's hair. (And Clark's never not going to be pleasantly startled by how soft his hair is. It's just more than a little strange to think of _soft_ and _Bruce_ in the same sentence.)

Bruce smirks against Clark's lips, and oh no—"Speak for yourself," he says, and yep, that line is all Bruce Wayne and all terrible. "You're... hm. Is 'radiant' too on the nose?"

Clark rolls his eyes, letting go of Bruce's hair to gently shove him in the shoulder. Bruce just rolls with the push, however, falling sideways onto the bed with a crooked smile, and links his hands behind his head.

"I'll take that as a yes," Bruce says.

For a moment, Clark stays just where he is, leaning slightly over Bruce to appreciate him, to watch the shadows shift as he breathes. Bruce's grin softens slowly into warm affection, and he reaches up one hand to trace the line of Clark's shoulder. His fingers, rough with calluses, are paradoxically tender, as if there's even a chance that Bruce could hurt Clark like this.

(Though, really, isn't that what Bruce is, deep down—a paradox? A relentless optimist wrapped up in so many layers of tired bitterness that one could, at first glance, be forgiven for assuming he is really the jaded cynic he still professes to be.)

Clark has never been very good at look-don't-touch. Not when it comes to Bruce, and especially not when he's lounging like that, like an invitation. So Clark takes that invitation, swinging his legs over Bruce's hips, and rests his hands on Bruce's shoulders.

The growing dawn gives Bruce's skin a warm, glowing cast, like the low embers of a late-night campfire. It seems to almost caress the planes of his chest, softening the lines of his myriad scars, as if to say, _here, I've warmed, you can touch me_.

So he does.

First with his fingers—Clark traces a pale, nearly faded line across Bruce's shoulder with a fingertip, the raised skin smooth to his touch. Then his lips; he bends down, bracing himself on Bruce's arms (and God, he'll get to them in a minute) to kiss a slow trail along that thin white line. He hears Bruce let out a slow breath, but he says nothing.

Clark assumes that that's a sign that he can continue his exploration. He shifts, resting against Bruce's legs, and starts to kiss across the broad expanse of his chest, to the gnarled tangle across the opposite shoulder. If they had the time, Clark would map out every single inch of him, memorize Bruce with his lips and fingers and tongue—but he'll make do with however many hours they have.

God, but he's beautiful.

Bruce's hand finds Clark's hair, fingers threading through the curls. "You looking to share the plan with me, here, or am I going to have to guess?" he asks, his voice just a little low, just a little rough.

Clark grins as he looks up Bruce's body. "Just showing my appreciation," he says, although _veneration_ feels a little more appropriate just this second. "You're—" _beautiful, stunning, an absolute work of art, possible proof that there really is a loving God—_ "pretty easy on the eyes, you know."

There's that crooked smile again, and Clark can't resist the urge to push himself up and kiss it. Bruce laughs into his mouth, warm and rich and genuine; it makes Clark's heart swell with adoration. "So I've been told," he says. "But I'm not much of one to just take this kind of thing lying down, you know. I prefer to be a little more proactive about my love life."

Clark draws back and shakes his head. "Later," he says. "Let me have this."

Bruce wets his lips, and it's far too slow to just be an incidental gesture, but Clark refuses to be distracted by how his tongue traces the line of his mouth, how his teeth scrape his lower lip after—he's not going to get distracted. He slips back down Bruce's body, trailing kisses down the column of his throat (his stubble scrapes Clark's mouth, and he really has no business enjoying that as much as he does), the slightly crooked line of his clavicle, the scattered scars and bruises across his shoulder and pectoral. His tongue swipes across Bruce's nipple, dragging a low, ragged sigh from Bruce's throat.

"You're an ass, Clark Kent," Bruce rasps, but he doesn't actually sound that broken up about it.

"So I've been told," Clark replies cheerfully.

He props himself up on his elbows before sitting on his knees, his hands following the lines of Bruce's ribs, up his chest, guiding his arms up until Bruce's hands find the metal headboard. Clark gently folds Bruce's fingers around the bars, arches up and kisses his wrists. (And God, that position just accentuates his triceps to an unfair degree, so Clark has to kiss there too.)

"Stay there," says Clark.

Bruce raises an eyebrow. "There are at least a dozen things in this room alone that you could use to keep me down, if you're really _that_ determined to just touch me without actually doing anything," he points out.

"Yup."

"Including the furniture itself, if you felt like ruining my bed."

Clark grins, stretching to kiss Bruce's wrist. "Yup."

"And you're just telling me to hold on to the bed." That eyebrow goes up a notch. "Seriously?"

Clark kisses the other wrist, then slowly kisses a path down Bruce's arm. "Yup." He glances up again to see Bruce staring, eyes dark, neck angled slightly forward and lips parted—yeah, he can't really say no to that. Clark pushes himself back up again and presses his lips against Bruce's, kissing him as slow and sweet as he likes.

Bruce sighs softly into Clark's mouth, his heart thudding furiously against Clark's chest. He arches up, his hips angling just shy of high enough to brush against Clark. A low sound of dismay spills from his mouth into Clark's. (And yet, for all his whining, his hands stay right where they are.)

"Clark, for God's sake," Bruce mutters, craning his neck to chase Clark's lips when Clark draws away. "Either tie me down properly or _do_ something."

Clark trails a hand down Bruce's chest, follows it with his lips and tongue. Bruce groans softly.

"I am doing something," Clark says, pressing his lips to the space above Bruce's quickening heart. "Do you not like it?"

He hears Bruce swallow. "I never said that."

Chuckling, Clark resumes his exploration as if there'd been no interruption. He maps the valleys of Bruce's ribs, between his collarbones, and he memorizes every perfect imperfection—the pale starburst of an old bullet wound, every jagged knife's edge, every purpling bruise.

And through it all, Bruce remains perfectly still, even as Clark slips further and further down his (breathtaking, miraculous, God-he-could-just-stare-for-hours) body, his lips and fingers tracing the contours of Bruce's powerful thighs. Here, too, there are scars, mostly faded; Clark loves them too. How can he not?

Bruce only moves to spread his thighs and give Clark more room. His hands, when Clark glances up, are still tightly wrapped around the headboard. When Clark glances back down, it's—well, it'd take a painful lack of observational skills not to notice the effect this is having, and Clark's a journalist.

"Clark," Bruce says, his voice a breathless rasp. "Please."

Clark could give Bruce what he wants; heaven knows they'd both enjoy it. Instead, though, he continues his path down Bruce's leg, his lips barely brushing the scraped skin of his knee, the tense curve of his calf, the arch of his foot. He can hear Bruce's ragged breathing, the pounding rush of his heart, as loudly as if it were in his ear, and the mix of sound and the way that Bruce's muscles keep tensing under the touch of his mouth is so heady as to make him a little weak.

He lowers Bruce's leg back onto the bed, takes his other ankle in hand and kisses along the line of his shin, his hands trailing the back of Bruce's calf and thigh—and here Bruce tenses and jerks, sucking in a faint, cut-off breath; when Clark looks up, his knuckles are pale as he strains not to let go of the bedframe. (To reach down, tangle his fingers in Clark's hair and pull him where he wants, as Clark knows from plenty of experience. Which... wouldn't be all bad, but that's not what he wants just this second.) Bruce's mouth is a tight line, eyes dark even in the growing light of dawn.

" _Clark,_ " Bruce says again. "If you want me to beg, you're not getting it."

Grinning, Clark kisses Bruce's hip, a pleasant shiver darting down his back at how Bruce stifles an answering moan. "Not really my thing," he says, his lips tracing the V of Bruce's pelvis. His cheek brushes the growing curve of Bruce's erection, but his mouth won't. Not yet. "Though it wouldn't actually kill you to say 'please' once in a while."

"For the love of _God_ , Clark," Bruce says, with much less bite than he was probably going for. "I'm making you sleep in the guest room for a week."

"Sure you are," Clark replies, just barely polite enough not to laugh outright at Bruce's impatience.

Bruce lifts a leg and (gently) kicks Clark in the shoulder. Which, Clark notes, is pretty much the opposite of saying _please,_ so he lifts himself up altogether, grinning at the Bruce's growl of frustration. Clark doesn't touch him as he shifts back up the mattress, except to bend down and press his lips to Bruce's jumping pulse.

" _Please,_ Clark," Bruce grates out, arching under him. "You're killing me, come on."

That particular choice of words isn't lost on Clark—and a different man, a more bitter one, might have made a crack about how _what goes around comes around_ , but Clark's (mostly) forgiven that particular transgression by now... and besides, now really isn't the time. So instead, he lifts his head, catching Bruce's mouth with his own and swallowing the little desperate noise of frustration Bruce makes.

And Clark supposes that's good enough; he might be an ass, as Bruce says, but he's not evil. Pausing to stretch up and kiss Bruce's hand—both to tease and to silently praise how startlingly well he's behaving himself—Clark moves back down Bruce's body, unable to resist the urge to leave a trail of quick, light kisses down the expanse of his chest. Bruce barely makes a noise of complaint now, probably out of fear that Clark might change his mind if he starts getting tetchy again.

Which isn't inaccurate, really. Clark can't help how entertaining it is to see Bruce frayed at the edges with frustration.

Clark settles near the end of the bed, sitting back as Bruce spreads his thighs for him again. Bruce's lips are parted and reddened, his face and chest lightly flushed, and it's—Clark really needs to stop thinking of everything Bruce does as the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, one of these days. Not right now, though. Right now, he dips his head down, trailing slow, open-mouthed kisses up the length of Bruce's shaft and doing an absolutely commendable job of not touching himself when Bruce lets out a low, damn near pornographic moan.

He keeps his hands on Bruce's thighs instead, feels the muscles shift under his palms as he lets Bruce drape his legs over his shoulders. Clark finds the head with his lips, swirling his tongue around it before tracing the slit in a single, wide swipe. Bruce makes a sudden, desperate noise, his hips jerking upwards, and Clark has to draw back a little to avoid getting hit in the nose. Trying his best not to laugh, he pulls Bruce's legs away from his back, pushing him back down onto the bed. Bruce tries to thrust up into Clark's mouth, but Clark isn't having any of that. He rests his hands on either side of Bruce's hips and holds him down as he kisses back down the shaft.

"You're awful," Bruce rasps, his head _thunk_ ing against the bedframe.

Clark can still feel Bruce shifting under his hands, trying to coax him into going faster, which is definitely not happening. He just makes a small noise of agreement as he drags his tongue up, slowly, slowly, just to hear Bruce's low groan.

When Bruce goes still enough that Clark thinks he won't get tetchy again, Clark lifts a hand from his hip, curling it around the base of his erection and stroking him with the same inexorable slowness with which he's approached the rest of this morning. Bruce's breath stutters in his throat; his body coils tight beneath Clark's hand, then relaxes, muscle by muscle, as he lets out a quiet sigh. He doesn't grouse any further, though, which Clark counts as a victory.

When Clark hears the bedframe creak from Bruce's grip, he glances up, and—okay, it's a little hard (difficult, _difficult_ ) to say no to the raw want in that expression. It's difficult to resist in the face of Bruce wanting him even when Clark is braced against it, but here and now, with the walls broken down from between them and Bruce spread out before him, hard and wanting and bound only by his own will.... Even Superman has his limits.

So Clark shifts, adjusting the angle of his neck, and takes Bruce properly into his mouth. Bruce rewards him with a breathless, muted moan. Clark's other hand wanders, tracing the planes of Bruce's abdomen, his ribs, his chest—and Bruce is quick to utilize his sudden freedom to roll his hips, moving up into Clark's mouth almost languidly in contrast to how impatient he's been so far. Clark does his best to move at Bruce's rhythm, stroking and bobbing his head in a gradual drag, coming close to but never quite pulling off of him entirely with every motion. His tongue drags along the underside of Bruce's shaft, laps around the head when he draws back, but Bruce saves those shuddering, desperate sounds for when Clark's tongue laps at the slit, or when he hollows his cheeks to suck, just so.

The rush of Bruce's heart, the faint tremble in his breaths—God, it all washes over Clark like a tide, and it takes a nigh herculean amount of effort not to take a hand off of Bruce to touch himself in turn. Right now, he wants to see how much he can love on Bruce until he's a groaning mess under Clark's tongue.

"Clark," Bruce breathes, "please..."

Which, if he keeps this up, might be sooner rather than later.

Clark moans softly—and Bruce seems to like that pretty well too, judging by the way he shudders. He pulls off of Bruce with a soft sound, still stroking him while his other hand takes hold of Bruce's hip again, lifting him slightly off the bed (and he _definitely_ likes that, likes those little reminders of how easily Clark can manhandle him) to make it easier when he cranes his neck down to put his mouth on Bruce's balls, drawn up tight to his body. He's close, or getting there, and Clark is tempted to pull back, to draw this out—but he thinks Bruce might seriously kick him then. His body is coiled, tense, his heart a thundering drum in Clark's ears, and the keen awareness that it's just Bruce's own stubbornness keeping him from reaching down, from gripping Clark's hair and yanking him back is enough to make Clark want to do it himself, drawing Bruce back into his mouth, stroking and sucking him barely out of rhythm with Bruce's heartbeat.

Bruce's thighs tense, the motion of his hips turning frantic and erratic. " _Clark,_ " he gasps, jerking up once, twice, and that's all the warning Clark gets before Bruce is coming down his throat.

Clark pulls back to avoid choking, and Bruce catches his cheek, his chin. Bruce's eyes are closed, his lips parted as he draws in deep, ragged breaths to bring himself down. His Adam's apple bobs, a tiny rivulet of sweat darting down the column of his throat. Pausing to wipe his cheek with the back of his hand, Clark climbs back up Bruce's body, kisses him and swallowing the tiny, overwhelmed sounds Bruce makes into his mouth—either at the events of the morning or at the taste of himself on Clark's tongue, it's difficult to tell.

Bruce's self-control finally breaks then, his hands wasting no time tangling in Clark's hair and holding him right where he is. Clark's definitely not about to complain about that—or about the way Bruce licks his way into his mouth, _God_.

"You planning on making a habit of that, Clark?" Bruce asks, his voice still low and rough (and Clark knows he probably shouldn't be turned on by how close it is to the Bat's voice, but the dick wants what it wants). "Because I really don't want to die of old age waiting for you to bring me off."

Clark chuckles, settling himself so that he's sitting astride Bruce's hips. "Only when you have time to spare," he promises.

Bruce rolls his eyes. "Clearly I need to schedule more morning meetings," he says, but he's cracking that crooked little grin when Clark leans in to kiss him again.

One of Bruce's hands trails down from Clark's hair, to trace Clark's shoulders, his ribs, his hip— _oh_. Clark gasps against Bruce's mouth, unable to keep himself from jerking up into Bruce's fist. That grin against Clark's lips sharpens into a knife's edge; Bruce's other hand finds Clark's hip, gripping him hard enough to bruise anyone else before the whole world upends itself and Clark is on his back before he even has the chance to yelp.

"Turnabout's fair play, farmboy," Bruce murmurs, "don't you think?"

If Bruce thinks Clark is going to mope about this—having Bruce leaning over him, broad chest still heaving, heart still pounding, the glint in his eye nearly predatory as he grips Clark's wrists and pins them to the mattress with one hand—he's going to be sorely disappointed. Bruce trails his free hand down Clark's chest, his eyes following the path of his fingers almost appraisingly. He looks back up into Clark's eyes, and his smirk is no sharper than that crooked grin as he jerks Clark's hands up, dragging him into a sitting position, and Clark just goes along with it, as if he couldn't just put Bruce on his back again if he actually wanted to (which he really, really doesn't). In the dwindling part of Clark's brain still capable of coherent thought he muses that this is a little poetic, isn't it, before Bruce presses his wrists against the bedframe and—and reaches for his nightstand, yanking a necktie off the lamp.

Oh. Well then. Turnabout indeed.

* * *

 

Clark is smiling even as Bruce starts to wrap the silk around his wrists, a few quick, simple loops more for aesthetic than anything else; structural integrity means jack shit when you're tying down someone who can shred titanium on accident.

"Do you hear me complaining?" Clark asks, his smile widening as Bruce ties one, two simple knots to keep him there.

"Suspiciously, no," Bruce says, leaning in to scrape his teeth over Clark's pulse, and mutters _ray of goddamn sunshine,_ which he knows perfectly well that Clark can hear loud and clear. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you might be into this."

Clark just laughs, and Bruce is glad his face is tucked into the crook of his neck, because Clark Kent naked, bright with the light of dawn and brimming with laughter is more radiance than he's ever been capable of dealing with on the best of days—much less so when he's still recovering from climax. Just the sound in his ear, rich and warm and so painfully goddamn genuine, is enough to make his heart stutter a little behind his ribs, and he doesn't bother concealing that much. (It's not like Clark hasn't known for months what he can make Bruce's heart do just by smiling right, flashing those stupid unfair dimples, goddamn him. Hiding how he reacts when Clark laughs just seems pointless nowadays.)

"Where did you get _that_ impression?" Clark asks, tilting his head to one side, laying his throat bare for Bruce to do as he sees fit.

What he sees fit to do is plagiarize Clark's— _teasing_ is the wrong word, _appreciation_ is far too tame, but _reverence_ and _worship_ are entirely inappropriate, concepts Bruce has not earned (will never earn), but Clark...

Clark has earned veneration at least a dozen times over by now—for God's sake, he literally died to save the world—and so Bruce does not flinch away from _worship_ now, as he crawls down Clark's body,  leaving a path of open-mouthed kisses down Clark's throat, the breadth of his perfect chest. It's too on the nose, he thinks, to liken Clark to a Greek god (and besides, he's met some of those, and has found them severely wanting). Doesn't mean he doesn't think it, however.

"Beats me," Bruce says dryly. "You hold your feelings so close to your chest, after all."

Clark laughs again, and it continues to be just as not okay as it always has been. Bruce ignores the swell of sentimentality in his chest, focuses instead on kissing every inch of Clark's flawless skin. And Clark, for his part, behaves—it would barely take a thought for him to break his bonds, but he's almost perfectly still, basking as much in Bruce's reverence as he does in the sunlight. The only evidence that this could be anything other than relaxing to him is how his pulse quickens under Bruce's lips when he kisses just above Clark's heart. (Not to mention the obvious, of course. But Bruce has every intention of repaying Clark in full, and that includes ignoring the obvious until Clark is wanting enough to plead; reverent he may be, but he is also terribly, terribly petty.)

Bruce's hands, too, map the perfect planes of Clark's chest, his flushed skin warm to Bruce's touch. His fingertips ghost across the dark hair across Clark's chest (and he'd been baffled, once, at how paradoxically human it was for this alien god to have chest hair, of all things, but now—now it's just another way that Clark is just as human as the rest of the planet). Clark gives a soft, voiceless sigh when Bruce starts to worship the impossible strength of his arms, his still-bound hands, kissing each knuckle one by one. And, because he is so close, Bruce kisses Clark's temple, his forehead, every point of his hairline, the sculpted-from-marble unfairness of his cheekbone and jaw. When Clark turns his head to kiss Bruce's own mouth—who is he to refuse?

Minutes, hours, a lifetime could have passed before Bruce finally decides he's mostly satisfied, draws himself lower to kiss a path down to Clark's hips. He keeps his eyes downcast, and doesn't see Clark's face at that little intake of breath when Bruce's tongue darts out to lap at the sharp divot of his pelvis. He can imagine, though, from a wealth of experience, and that's good enough for now. And then—

"Bruce," Clark whispers, his voice curling around Bruce's name like a prayer. "God," he says, "I really should have known you'd go tryhard with this."

Bruce looks up then, his smile perhaps less sharp than it ordinarily would be, running his hand along the side of Clark's thigh. "You'd be disappointed if I didn't," he says.

"Only a little," Clark says, and his laugh then is a breathless chuckle, the warmth of it still winding around Bruce's heart and making it swell with wonder and other notions he doesn't dare touch.

(Bruce does not love, not after—not anymore. Whatever Bruce Wayne loves turns to ash, and he refuses to let Clark burn both for his hate and for his adoration.)

"You have no right to complain about how long I take ever again, just so you know," Clark continues, his spread legs a blatant hint. "Not that _I_ mind—" and Clark has always been pretty bad at lying—"but. Just saying."

"I'll take that under advisement," Bruce says dryly.

Clark lets out a disbelieving little snort, cut off when Bruce lowers his head and nips at his thigh. His muscles tense under Bruce's hands, and that just makes Bruce smirk against his skin. When he glances up through his lashes, Clark's worrying his lower lip, his eyes somehow full of both lust and an almost puppy-like kind of pleading. Bruce watches the steady rise and fall of Clark's chest, the almost rhythmic way in which his arms flex and relax as he tries not to shift in his bonds, such as they are.

If Bruce were a different man—or perhaps just a younger one, a more foolish one—he'd pull back and get a picture of this exact moment: Superman, gloriously naked and splayed across his bed, face and chest flushed and eyes dark with desire, hard and wanting and yet not doing a damn thing about it. But he knows how easy and how cruelly such things can leak and spread, and he isn't prepared to do that to Clark. (Ostensibly, because of what it could do to the security Clark's civilian identity, still a little tenuous in the wake of his resurrection. And, perhaps, because he knows he couldn't bear how such an infringement would cause Clark to suffer, and certainly couldn't shoulder the guilt that would come with it.)

Instead, he shifts back until he's between Clark's ankles and sits up on his own heels, raking his eyes across Clark's incredible, flawless body, and burns the moment into his memory, a snapshot for him and him alone, to be pulled out of his mental filing cabinet whenever necessary.

Clark swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing tantalizingly. Fitting, Bruce thinks, as he gives in to temptation, crawling back up his body to scrape his teeth over the impossibly soft skin of Clark's throat. Clark lets out a quiet, shaking breath, his body shivering beneath Bruce's weight. The mattress shifts as Clark draws up his legs, hooking a knee over Bruce's hip, which just will not do. Bruce's smile then is just as sharp as ever, as he slips a hand under Clark's knee and coaxes him back down onto the bed.

"Behave," Bruce commands, "unless you want me to tie your legs down too."

Clark gives a sound perilously close to an actual whimper then, which is... intriguing, and something to be examined later. For now, Clark obeys, though the way he spreads his legs just a hair's breadth wider than before is more than a little telling. Bruce kisses him on the mouth, a reward, and resumes his journey down Clark's body.

His legs, too, are dusted with dark hair, all the way from his upper thighs down to his ankles, ever so slightly rough against Bruce's lips and cheek. On the surface, Clark is so ordinary—except no, no, there's not a world in which Clark Kent could ever be considered _ordinary_ —and so painfully human. Yet beneath all of that, not a single imperfection; not so much as a mole, let alone a scar, the perfect smoothness of his unblemished skin belying his invulnerability and fundamentally alien origins.

Had Bruce not spent the better part of a year cataloging all of the ways in which the Superman was wholly distant and other from humanity, he might have a hard time wrapping his head around the notion. Had he not spent the last several months incidentally discovering all the ways in which Clark was no different from the rest of them (he laughs at videos of penguins falling over until he cries; he drinks coffee with a frankly heretical amount of cream and sugar; he drools on the pillow when he sleeps and clings when he has bad dreams—) then he might be terrified. Instead, he finds himself awestruck, marveling at the impossible man laid out before him.

Some of that awe must be showing on his face, or else some unaccounted for shift in his autonomic responses. (He remembers when that used to terrify him too, the sheer depth to which Clark could invade his privacy just by listening for his heartbeat, or smelling his hormonal shifts—and it's still unsettling, sometimes, but at the same time, there's a reassurance to be found in the knowledge that the man who can find him in a second from halfway across the world simply by listening for his heartbeat ~~loves~~ is inexplicably fond of him.) "Penny for your thoughts?" asks Clark, sounding much less casual than he probably thinks he does.

Bruce doesn't reply for a moment, instead taking Clark's ankle in his hands and kissing up the arch of his foot. It's something of a testament to Bruce's own resolve that this is the first time he's actually gone so far as to kiss Clark's feet, as prevalent as _that_ particular fantasy tends to be in his more pleasant dreams. What it would be like, he finds himself wondering, to prostrate himself before this quite literally unearthly creature, to give himself over and surrender wholly and utterly to his will? Would Clark even accept that kind of devotion? As willing as he is to lie back and receive the worship Bruce finds himself performing now, Bruce can't quite imagine him having much lasting patience for a worshipper who had once put the proverbial nails into his hands—or, at the very least, forged the hammer that drove them home.

Few things, Bruce finds, ruin the mood quite like Evangelical guilt. Internally chastising himself, and endlessly glad (as always) that Clark's powers don't include any sort of actual mind-reading, he lowers Clark's foot back onto the mattress and strokes idle circles into his calf with his thumb. "You're a goddamn miracle," he says softly.

Clark has a strange talent for cracking half-shy little smiles at the most inappropriate times, ducking his head and dimpling in a way that makes Bruce's heart twist almost painfully, and it is far too timid and endearing for a man bound to and spread wide across Bruce's bed. "I'll bet you say that to all the boys," Clark says, teeth teasing at his lower lip, which is completely unacceptable. Bruce has to put a stop to it, and so stretches up the length of Clark's body to kiss him breathless.

Also unacceptable is the shaky little moan that passes his lips into Bruce's mouth, the way he tilts up his hips, the way he whispers _Bruce_ and _please_ with a soft, trembling gasp as punctuation. Were Clark anyone else, Bruce would think it's specifically calculated to crack at his resolve, but here, in private with all the walls torn down (or, at least, all of Clark's), he's only ever been earnest to a fault. He's given Bruce no reason to think there might be any guile now.

Still, it's not going to work. Bruce has every intention of doing this right.

"Only the ones who come back from the dead," Bruce deadpans, lowering himself to brush his lips over Clark's throat, feel his pulse under his mouth—and then the low vibration of his laughter.

"Right, how silly of me," Clark says, breathless, tilting his head away to give Bruce more room to explore.

There's a day's worth of stubble scattered along Clark's jawline, the underside of his chin, rough against Bruce's lips. Bruce kisses every inch he can reach, reveling in those little catches of Clark's breath and the way he shifts beneath Bruce's touch.

When Bruce settles against Clark properly, knees framing his hips, Clark jerks up, his cock pressing up against Bruce's stomach for just a fraction of a second. That draws a long, low moan from Clark's throat, another pleading: " _Bruce..._ " His eyes are simultaneously dark with lust and almost pitiful in their pleading—and Bruce can be cruel, he can be utterly merciless, but when Clark has been behaving himself so well thus far...

Setting aside a brief moment to regret that it would take time he's not currently willing to spend to prepare Clark for a more in-depth form of veneration, so to speak—and how would Clark take _that_ , he wonders, Bruce undoing the knots at his wrists, turning him over and pressing his mouth onto him, into him, worshiping with his tongue and hands—Bruce settles back down between Clark's knees. Now's as good a time as any, so he kisses a slow, deliberate path up Clark's inner thigh, not bothering to hide a smirk at how the muscle under his palms tenses as he draws closer to Clark's cock.

"Seriously, Bruce, you have no room to talk about how long _I_ take now."

Bruce's only reply is to raise an eyebrow and scatter a slow series of open-mouthed kisses up the curve of Clark's shaft, drinking in those furtive sounds of want, the sight of Clark's hands trembling as he strains not to break his makeshift bonds, the _smell_ of him, God. Clark spreads his legs just a little more, biting at his lower lip again.

When Bruce (finally) wraps his lips around him, Clark sucks in a cut-off gasp through his teeth, shivering under Bruce's hands, the whole of him practically vibrating with tension as Bruce slips further and further down his cock. Clark's hips jerk upward barely even a fraction of an inch, and even that much of a lapse is enough to get a string of half-coherent apologies spilling from Clark's mouth before Bruce pushes himself down, working relaxing his throat until his nose brushes the tangle of dark curls trailing up towards Clark's stomach.

"Bruce," Clark breathes, and there's a faint _thunk_ when he presses the back of his head up against the bedframe. Apparently at a loss for words past that, he falls silent but for those wondering gasps and moans.

Bruce draws back to breathe, lets his eyes fall shut and gives a soft moan around him in answer once he's physically capable, and the way Clark shudders under his mouth is enough to make the sheer amount of daylight they've burned here completely worth it. He draws his palms under Clark's thighs, his ass, squeezing gently as he coaxes Clark further into his mouth. There's pressure against his scalp then, and fingers in his hair, and he'd be slightly more annoyed at that lapse were it not for how his pulse jumps at the knowledge of, _God_ , all the things that hand could do and Bruce couldn't do a damn thing about it, hold him down and fuck his throat all morning—but no, no, he just guides Bruce's head back and forth, at as languid a pace as has marked this whole morning. When Bruce pushes up against the palm at the back of his head, Clark relents, lets him go.

"I thought the whole point of this was for you to lie back and let me _show my appreciation,_ as you put it," Bruce says dryly.

Clark clears his throat, even going so far as to try and slip his hand back into the now somewhat ruined loop of the necktie. (Ruined, Bruce notes, because the knot's come loose; Clark may have broken whatever unspoken rules they've put in place, but he didn't even tear the fabric. Bruce is... proud, not that he's going to say so aloud in this lifetime.) "Right," he says. His attempts at getting back into his bindings prove fruitless, and he lets his hands fall back to the bed. "Sorry." And then, dimpling, he adds: "What're you going to do, spank me?"

Bruce raises his eyebrows at that. "So much for the big blue innocent boy scout," he mutters, bending back down to kiss the head of Clark's cock. "Depends on if you ask nicely enough," he adds aloud, before Clark can say anything, "and whether I'd end up breaking my hand on your ass after."

Clark snickers behind his hand, glancing away. "I mean, I don't know about the second part," he says, his other hand coming to rest in Bruce's hair, "but I think I can be pretty nice when I want to be."

 _Of course you can,_ Bruce thinks, a pang in his chest. _You're forgiving enough to sleep with the man who tried to kill you._ "We'll discuss later," he says, lifting a hand to idly stroke Clark while his mouth can't be doing the work. He lifts his head up, pressing into Clark's palm, lets his eyes flutter closed when Clark starts to stroke along his scalp.

"I look forward to it," Clark says, his grin faltering when Bruce wraps his lips around him again. His head hits the bedframe again, lips parting around an almost stammering moan.

He's so damn _quiet_ , Bruce thinks. And he knows why, knows all about how pubescent Clark Kent had lost control of his abilities and shattered his own bedroom window during his first attempts at self-exploration, but surely he has a better grip on them now. Not that this is terrible, these wondering gasps and moans stifled behind Clark's palm, but surely, surely it wouldn't be so bad to hear Clark's screams of pleasure, rather than the cries of pain that haunt Bruce's nightmares.

Bruce pulls off of Clark with a soft sound, a thin line of saliva connecting his lips to Clark's cock for just a moment before breaking. He lifts himself up, keeping his arm outstretched so that he can still stroke Clark, and crawls up Clark's body. Clark is quick to draw him towards himself, to nip at Bruce's lips and tease his tongue into Bruce's mouth—and God, there's another quiet little moan when Clark tastes himself on Bruce's tongue; if Bruce were a younger man, that tiny, wanting sound is all it would take to bring them right back to square one.

"Let me hear you," Bruce whispers.

"Your house is almost completely made of glass," Clark points out, wincing.

Bruce squeezes, just so, for the cut-off gasp that Clark sucks in, the furtive little whimper, the way his eyelids flutter as he struggles to keep his eyes open, watching Bruce with that desperate hunger. "Let me hear you," Bruce repeats.

Clark groans, his grip in Bruce's hair tightening. "You've been," he says, his back arching, " _hearing_ me all morning, you know." Another low moan spills past his lips, a little louder, a little closer to what Bruce wants.

Bruce smirks against Clark's mouth. "You know me," he says, "I'll never be satisfied."

"God," Clark says, his laugh cut off by another low moan as Bruce starts to stroke him in earnest. "Don't I know it. Lucky for you it's—it's hard to wear me down, huh?"

"Mm," Bruce agrees, shifting so he can nip at Clark's earlobe, scrape his teeth over the perfect line of his throat. "Lucky me." He moves again, kissing down Clark's body as he continues to stroke him, drawing his tongue across the shifting planes of Clark's stomach when Clark helpfully arches up.

"You'd—mmnh," Clark says, intelligently, bucking up into Bruce's fist. "You'd make me—make me sleep on the couch if I broke your house."

Bruce looks up at Clark through his eyelashes, drinking in his flushed cheeks, his parted lips, the desperation in those bright blue eyes. "You wouldn't," he says. Clark's whole existence has been marked by remarkable self-control, after all, even in the throes of passion; the fact that Bruce's hips haven't been shattered several dozen times over is a testament to that. "Come on, Clark. Let me hear you."

Clark gives a pleading whimper, shaking under Bruce's touch. When Bruce moves back between his thighs, draws his mouth back over Clark's cock, he lets out that shameless, shameless moan Bruce has been waiting to hear all morning. His fingers tighten again, shakily, in Bruce's hair, holding him right where he is. Bruce's eyes fall shut as Clark rolls his hips up into his mouth, moaning around him at every stroke.

" _God_ , Bruce," Clark breathes. Bruce opens his eyes again to see Clark's flutter closed, lips parted on a shuddering gasp that tries to be Bruce's name.

The muscles of Clark's stomach tense with every little rock of his hips, his free hand clenching and unclenching in the sheets before Bruce reaches out to slot his fingers into the spaces between Clark's. Clark gives another faint, desperate noise—desire or gratitude or some combination of both—as he squeezes Bruce's hand, just light enough not to really hurt. Bruce doesn't close his eyes again, doesn't look away, doesn't so much as blink because he'll be damned if he misses a millisecond of this, of Clark Kent swept away with pleasure, of his wanting, breathless gasps and shaking groans. The motions of his hips turn jerky, erratic, as much thrusting into Bruce's mouth as twitching helplessly. His grip on Bruce's hand tightens, once, his other hand pushing Bruce onto his cock until Bruce's nose brushes his underbelly and _God_ that sends a spark of fire through Bruce's blood like almost nothing else in the split second before Clark finally cries out and he comes down Bruce's throat.

The hand in Bruce's hair goes slack, falling to the mattress as Clark turns boneless beneath him. Bruce licks his lips as he pulls off of him, unable to bite back a smile as he crawls back up to slot himself against Clark's side. For a while, they just lie together, Bruce idly tracing the contours of Clark's body with his fingertips and Clark simply breathing, eyes closed, face flushed. There's a swell of adoration admiration in Bruce's chest, a flurry of thoughts that he refuses to give voice—Clark is beautiful, a goddamn miracle, Bruce will never know what the fuck he ever did remotely right to make Clark think the reasonable course of action was to climb into bed with him instead of burning him down to ash.

Clark finally opens his eyes, turns to cup Bruce's cheek in his hand, his thumb moving in slow, gentle strokes across Bruce's stubble. "What I wouldn't give to know what you're thinking right now," he murmurs, voice still just so slightly rough—and that just gives Bruce another quiet pang of affection, of a longing he knows is irrational because Clark is right _here_ , but Bruce—

"I don't deserve you," Bruce answers softly, letting his eyes slip shut again under Clark's gentle attentions. He isn't going to elaborate any further than that; for one thing, there's simply no need.

For another, he flatly refuses to air out all of his (myriad) psychological issues not minutes after Clark came in his mouth like that.

Clark makes a soft, sympathetic noise before the bed shifts, and Bruce feels Clark's warm lips against his forehead. "For what it's worth," he says, "even if that wasn't bull—which it is—" and Bruce can't not snort in disbelief at that—"I don't think it's a matter of deserving in the first place. The heart wants what the heart wants."

That just adds a whole separate pile of problems to Bruce's existing list: namely, the notion that it's Clark's _heart_ that desires Bruce this way, that they aren't just two lost and troubled souls craving the friction and heat of a shared bed. Clark wanting Bruce's looks, his body—Bruce can deal with that, can compartmentalize it and make sense of it.

Clark wanting Bruce's affections, knowing full well that they're a poison, a death sentence, is so ludicrous, so insane that Bruce can't even begin to parse through it. He could do better. He _has_ done better. What kind of self-flagellation drives a man to want the heart of the man who once dedicated his life to his death, whose love has never brought anything but pain.

"You're out of your mind," Bruce mutters, and kisses Clark on the mouth before he can protest.

Clark chuckles against Bruce's lips, his fingers threading through Bruce's hair. (With his heightened senses, can he feel the difference in texture from black to grey? Hear the way Bruce's bones creak, the way they complain just before the weather goes foul? God, even if he could somehow ignore how unthinkable it is that Clark could ever seek out the love of a man who once murdered him, isn't it just as cruel to want him when Clark is still in his prime, invulnerable to nearly every human affliction, and Bruce is....

As much as he pretends he isn't, Bruce is human, and Bruce is mortal. Excluding Superman's prior experience with mortality, there is absolutely no question in Bruce's mind that he will die for good before Clark comes anywhere close. Isn't it just another cruelty to have Clark's affections to himself only to die in five, ten, fifteen years—one way or another?)

"Hey," Clark says, either sensing the morbidity of Bruce's train of thought or seeing some shift in his face or some other bullshit born of having every sense heightened to a nigh-godlike extreme. He strokes across Bruce's forehead, his scalp, and kisses Bruce's temple. "Whatever doom and gloom you've got swimming around in there, you stop that."

Bruce sighs, drawing himself closer until he's practically draped himself over Clark's chest. And Clark is warm—warm, and solid, and an anchor to the world outside his own thoughts. He tucks his head under Clark's chin, not at all so that he doesn't have to look Clark in the eye. "That's a funny joke, Clark," he says. "If the League doesn't pan out, maybe you should think about stand-up."

Clark slaps Bruce lightly on the shoulder. "I'm serious, Bruce. I don't know what's going on up there, but I know when you're getting gloomy." He shifts, until Bruce has little choice but to look up at him. Bastard. "Talk to me?"

"What is there to talk about?" Bruce asks.

Raising an eyebrow, Clark lightly taps Bruce's forehead. Bruce wrinkles his nose at him. "Whatever's on your mind," Clark says. "Please?"

Bruce does his level best not to grimace at that, at Clark's unbearably earnest attempts to have an actual conversation about this. "I already said all that needs to be said. I don't deserve you," he repeats, "and if you think that _I'm_ at all what your heart wants, then what we need to talk about is your self-destructive tendencies."

Clark snorts out a laugh. " _My_ self-destructive tendencies," he echoes disbelievingly. "Right. Says _Batman_."

"I'm not the one sleeping with the man who murdered me—"

"You didn't," Clark cuts in, his voice firm. "Come on, Bruce, we've been through this song and dance before. You didn't kill me."

"I might not have pulled the trigger," Bruce retorts, "but I sure as hell helped build the gun. Even you don't have glasses rose-tinted enough to deny that much."

"You brought me back," Clark points out.

"The team needed you," Bruce says, jaw tight. ~~_I needed you._~~ "It wasn't an atonement—not enough of one, anyway." He had been prepared to die that day, just as he had been prepared to die the night of their confrontation. Maybe even then, the atonement wouldn't have been enough. His own life, in exchange for Superman's, seems such a paltry thing now, having lived in a world without the light of his hope. The world had crumbled when Clark had fallen; if Bruce had been the one to die that night in the rain, he thinks, the world would have taken a breath and simply moved on. "It doesn't change the reality of what I did."

Clark's expression is so soft, so sympathetic it makes Bruce's chest ache. "What's done is done," he says softly. "I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm more than willing to put that behind us if you are—which means what matters is what you decide to do with that second chance."

Bruce swallows the emotion closing up his throat and pushes his face into the crook of Clark's shoulder rather than meet those bright, gentle blue eyes. All this does is cement his opinion further: he unequivocally does not deserve this man, this ray of sunlight with a too-big, bleeding heart. He feels Clark's arms fold around his shoulders, squeezing him lightly.

"Let me make my own decisions, Bruce," Clark murmurs, kissing the side of Bruce's head. "I'm a big boy," he adds, and Bruce can hear him smiling, can practically hear those stupid dimples, "I can take care of myself."

Bruce scoffs, but finds he doesn't have the energy to argue much further. "If you say so," he murmurs. It's morning—late morning, at that, far too late to consider drifting off even in the faint haze of post-coital exhaustion, but Bruce finds he wants little more than to give in to the gentle warmth and steady breathing of the man beneath him and just sleep a little longer. Perhaps another of Clark's latent abilities, Bruce muses, is to be able to relax someone until they have no choice to fall asleep.

A year ago, that would have terrified him. And yet here he is now, silently melting in Clark's arms, wondering if maybe this might mean he won't need whiskey to sleep anymore.

Clark jostles him when he tries to sit up—Bruce absolutely does not grumble like a tired, petulant child—still holding him firmly in his arms as ever. (It's odd, Bruce thinks, being on this side of the equation, being held and cradled and god _damn_ he's tired.) "Oh no you don't," Clark says. "You fall back asleep now, you'll be grumpy the whole rest of the day—and grumpy at _me_ for letting you. C'mon, up you get."

Which is all the warning Superman evidently feels is necessary to give before slipping his arms under Bruce's knees and back and lifting him bodily off the bed. Bruce scrabbles for purchase for a few seconds until he gets his arms around Clark's neck and his heart rate down to acceptable levels. Once he's got a decent grip, Bruce swats Clark upside the back of his head for good measure. "I wasn't going to fall asleep," he says, scowling.

"Sure you weren't," Clark says cheerfully. "Let's get some coffee in you anyway."

That, at least, Bruce has no inclination to argue with. Clark turns, depositing him back onto the mattress before casting about for Bruce's spare clothes. He doesn't seem to hear, or else he completely ignores Bruce's grumbled protests that he can dress himself, dammit, and insists on slipping Bruce into his own pajamas. Eventually, Bruce just rolls his eyes and takes it—it's in his best interests not to fight Superman, as he's realized, even when it comes to things as simple as letting him put Bruce's socks on. Which is—backwards, isn't it, Clark acting almost subservient like this? But he's done before Bruce can think to voice his complaint, and all Bruce can do is kneel down on the carpet and return the favor.

That, at least, feels right.

Clark is smiling when Bruce straightens up, and he's smiling in the half second before he tilts his head up to kiss Bruce on the mouth, and he's smiling as he bends down and picks Bruce up again, as effortlessly as a bag of flour or a whole goddamn apartment complex. (Bruce doesn't think he'd ever seen Clark smile, _really_ smile, before his death. He'd seen the Superman's thunderous glare, his deific disapproval, his pain, but never his joy. This is—this is better.)

In the end, it's also in his best interests to just sit still and let himself be carried down to the kitchen. Wouldn't want Clark to accidentally dump him onto the stairs, after all. It's pragmatic.

Clark at least lets him get back onto his feet before they actually walk into the kitchen—while there's little doubt in Bruce's mind that Alfred wouldn't say a word aloud about the sight of his employer being bridal carried, half-naked, to the coffee pot, he just knows that he'd get an earful later. Not that that ends up being a problem in the first place; when they reach the kitchen, it's completely empty, allowing Clark to pull back a chair for Bruce to sit in and start making breakfast himself. Because of course.

It's... idyllic, just being able to sit back and watch Clark work as the sunlight pours through the windows, caressing Clark's skin as he moves, and Bruce thinks, maybe, he might be able to earn this after all.

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks, as ever, as ever ever ever, to my dear friend and beta KathrynShadow, for noticing my occasionally really dumb errors, and to the OP of this prompt for somehow magically predicting that my body worship-loving ass would stumble into the kink meme and be All The Hell Over That Shit. (If you want to de-anon yourself, I will be more than happy to gift this to you here. <3)


End file.
